Sunday, November 14, 2010

Me: Hey, Babe.... can you fix my super-duper-big-circle-paper-punch? There is one edge that just doesn't cut well. Technically it works, but I really have to push hard and my arm starts to hurt. This is for my Christmas cards and so I have to have this done ASAP.

Hubby: I can, but wouldn't it be easier if you just had me cut them out for you?

Me: If you would prefer, that would be great. Here is the stack of card stock, 2 circles per page please.

Hubby: How many circles do you need me to cut out?

Me: 60

Hubby: WHAAAAAA?????? You send out 60 Christmas cards EVERY YEAR?!?!?!?!?!

Me: No. Geeze!.... I send out 120, I already cut out the 1st 60 circles and now my arm is tired.

That's right!!!! This week is Christmas-Card-Crunch-Time!!!!! I have 120 Christmas cards to make and my deadline is Wednesday the 24th. And to throw in a real kink... we are going to be out of town this weekend and I will be unable to work on them at all from Friday to Sunday afternoon. I hope to get a lot accomplished this week but since my youngest has hit the terrible twos almost instantly this week, I might be setting the bar a little high. :-)

Monday, November 8, 2010

I was on the website full of almost all of my inspiration... Anthropologie, and I found this sweater and fell in love. It is knitted with what looks like worsted weight yarn so I think I am going to try my hand at creating a pattern for this baby..... as if I don't already have enough to do. :-)

Thursday, November 4, 2010

So, I cheated this year. My oldest wanted to be Darth Vader and a friend had given us a costume that her son wore last year. I planned on embellishing it a little but then I figured that it would be a hassle for him to dress himself at school for his party if there was all kinds of extra things on his costume. So he had a store bought costume this year... and he didn't care, it worked out.

Since my youngest is too young to pick his own costume, we made him into Yoda. I had to make his entire costume which turned out to be a piece of cake. I used a pattern for his pants and made them out of brown linen. I cut apart one of his long sleeve t-shirts that I was willing to sacrifice and used it as a pattern for the shirt, which I also made out of brown linen. I made a few alterations to the shirt to make it more "Yoda-ish". At times Yoda wears a cream colored cloak, so I also used the t-shirt for that pattern. When I made the hood I didn't allot for size so it didn't fit, but really Yoda's hood isn't big enough to fit those big ears anyway so I think it was fine. I also sewed the brown linen scraps together and created 3 long pieces of double fold biased tape that I sewed together and braided for the belt

The "hat" I made out of green polar fleece. I cut out a square that was bigger than his head, I draped it on his head and pinched each of the sides so that it cupped his head. I cut out 4 ear shapes, sewed them together, stuffed them and then sewed them on top of the gathered sides. I used a machine to sew the front and back of the ears together but the gathers on the hat and attaching the ears had to be done by hand. I think if I had it to do over, I would have sewed some details into the ears but all in all I think it tuned out just fine.

As a bonus, the glow stick that I bought for "little Yoda" just happened to be green so he had his own mini light saber in the appropriate Yoda green. I had a toy light saber for him but it didn't light up and was frankly too big for him to carry around anyway.

My oldest wants to be Indiana Jones next year, so I better get started on that! :-) But 1st, my Christmas cards need to be made BY Thanksgiving!